1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a wireless communication apparatus and a wireless positioning system, which perform positioning through wireless communication.
2. Related Art
GPS (global positioning system) is well known as a wide-area position information service. However, GPS suffers from a problem that, within buildings or behind doors, position information services are not available. Further, GPS, which relies on GPS satellite infrastructure, also suffers from a problem that infrastructure failure or service outage will disable use of the position information services.
Wireless LAN (local area network) positioning technique has been used for some time, which enables positioning not relying on a GPS satellite but using electrical measurement information of widespread wireless LAN. However, in the wireless LAN positioning technique, the positioning accuracy depends on the number of base stations that can receive signals and specify positions. Therefore, the wireless LAN positioning technique suffers from a problem of the cost of building the base stations involved in spreading the technique in a wide area.
In order to solve the problems as set forth above, infrastructure that makes it possible to provide wide-area position information services not relying on a GPS satellite has started to build (see, for example, JP-A-2008-104029). In this infrastructure, the information of detecting wireless LAN stations that are used for communication is aggregated in the cloud for cloud computing using computing resources provided as a service over a network. Then, the LAN stations can be used as base stations for position detection, thereby reducing the cost of building base stations. Thus, wide-area position information services not relying on a GPS satellite becomes available.
However, the technique of aggregating in cloud the information of detecting wireless LAN base stations as disclosed in JP-A-2008-104029 also suffers from a problem that the positioning accuracy greatly depends on the density of the registered base stations.